This is why I left you in Crete,
so that you might put what remained into order and appoint elders
in every town as I directed you. If anyone is above reproach,
the husband of one wife and his children are believers and not
open to the charge of debauchery or insubordination for an overseer
as God's steward must be above reproach. He must not be arrogant,
quick tempered or drunkard or violent. or greedy for gain,
but hospitable, a lover of good, self-controlled, upright, holy
and disciplined. He must hold firm to the trustworthy
word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in
sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it. For
there are many who are insubordinate, empty talkers and deceivers,
especially those of the circumcision party. They must be silenced,
since they are upsetting whole families by teaching for shameful
gain what they ought not to teach. One of the Cretans, a prophet
of their own, said, quote, Cretans are always liars, evil beasts,
lazy gluttons. This testimony is true. Therefore,
rebuke them sharply that they may be sound in the faith, not
devoting themselves to Jewish myths and the commands of people
who turn away from the truth. To the pure. All things are pure,
but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure, but both their
minds and their consciences are defiled. They profess to know
God, but they deny him by their works. They are detestable, disobedient,
unfit for any good work. It would be very, very easy to
step into this position and and literally. Take weeks upon weeks
upon weeks to. To express everything that I
that I think about when I read this text. And as brother prayed
that that God's word would be spoken and not my journey, however,
I pray that my journey is God's word and that you would join
me in it. Last week, we looked at what
it meant to see a false teacher, what their motives were, what
the church's response was to be, and then also among the church,
how the elders are really given the responsibility within the
church to govern that and give oversights of that. And it doesn't
let us all off the hook, but every Christian doesn't have
to go to every pastor in every city and try to correct the wrong
teaching. Today, I want to focus primarily
on verse 15 and 16. And I want you to I'm going to
do something a little different. Paul does some positive negatives
and negative, positive, negative, positive negatives. He says a
lot of bad things and he says some good things and he says
some bad things and some good things. And he says we ought
not to do this, which is a negative teaching. And then he says, but
we should do this, which is positive teaching. And so when I say negative
or positive, I'm talking about in the syntax and the grammar.
Don't do this. Don't do that. Don't do that.
It's like with a child that's, you know, young child. We say
don't step on that. And they hear step on that. They
step on don't sort of like they just sort of like step on that,
you know. And so it's it's one of those
things that sometimes I think in Scripture, even though we're
not children, per se, we are children or children. And we
have a lot on our minds today. We've got financial problems
on our minds today. We've got marital problems on our minds
today. We've got ministry problems on our minds today. We've got
job problems and home problems and health problems. We've got
issues of wanting to be more active in the church, but we
can't. We've got issues of wanting to be more used by God, but we
don't know how. We've got issues of dealing with
our own pride and our own selfishness and our own self-pity and our
own sin and our own temptation. We've got all these things. And
now we're going to sit here and learn about how to be pure and
that to the pure, all things are pure. You know, and it's
so easy to get called up when we're studying the word of God
on the negative. Well, I can't do this, and I can't do that,
and I can't do this, and I don't want to do those things, but I've
got to make sure I don't do those things. I'm not even going to speak to
those people who are looking for the gray area. If it's almost right, it's
wrong. I speak to us, the people of
God who desire holiness, who desire purity, who desire to
walk in the constitution of God's holiness because it is a display
of his intrinsic worthiness. We want that. That's what we
are. We do those things because it is who we've been made to
be. It's not a struggle to try to desire it. It's a fight to
overcome the flesh and the desire of our hearts, which is, well,
overcome the flesh with battles against the desire of our hearts,
which is holiness. Now we find ourselves professing
to walk in the light, but yet we aren't desiring that, and
that's sort of where Paul is here, talking to Titus. That's
a problem where you've got a lot of people in the church, leaders
in the churches, deacons in the churches, teachers in the churches,
elders. I would suggest that maybe some
people were self-proclaimed elders. There had been none at this time.
Only only Titus Paul says you got to appoint more men, because
what I think is happening is a bunch of men standing up saying,
I'm the elder, I'm an elder, I'm an elder, I'm a teacher,
I'm a teacher, I'm a teacher. And we see that they weren't.
They didn't qualify. They weren't qualified because,
as we'll see today, they weren't born again. They were impure,
they were defiled. So what what Paul is doing now
is he's separating the entirety of the world and in the entirety
of the community of faith. And I say community of faith
very broadly. Those people who if we go to Hebrews chapter six
and chapter 10 and we see those that were in the power of the
Holy Spirit and tasted of the heavenly gifts and all these
things, these aren't Christians. These are people who profess
to be Christians who are conjoined in proximity to the people of
God, but are not redeemed through the sovereignty of God and his
power. They do the things that Christians do, but they are not
in the body of Christ. Friends, there's no difference
between those people and these people. And I pray by the mercy
of God, there's nobody in the sound of my voice that falls
into the defiled today. But Paul has separated the entirety
of the world. into two categories, he says,
you are either pure or you are defiled. Let's think about that
for a minute. What does it mean to have purity?
Let's take the simplistic form of understanding that pure, by
definition, will give us a word that we have to then define by
definition. Let's say pure means not defiled. And defiled means
not pure. Doesn't he like that? That'll
be on the exist. Got to write a five page essay
on those definitions. So let's use it in context, pure,
you want your water to be pure. So physically pure, you want
to see you want to look at when you put the tap on or somebody
hands you a bottle of water and it's got it's got green stuff
in it. No, not going to happen. Not
only even that the water's pure, but the container's dirty. You
don't want it either. You don't want a worn out cistern.
You don't want nasty, moldy cups. You don't want a jug that's got
tadpole swimming in it. We don't want to see anything
nasty or defiled. The water that's not pure, if
it's got stuff floating in there and algae and all sorts of bacteria,
it's defiled. It's no longer pure. It's unfit
for consumption. So not only does it something
physically, as we see visibly, but also in the contents, the
contaminants of of that particular water, if it is pure, it should
have nothing in it that's dangerous for you. And any of us who have
taken a trip to Mexico, there's several signs that you see when
you go into Mexico, one of which is don't drink the water. Hotels
do not drink the water. Keep your mouth closed in the
shower. Do not brush your teeth with the water. And they provide
bottled water. Why? Because you will get a bacterial.
I mean, you will get a parasite and you will be sick your entire
vacation. And it is not a joke. Because you can't see it, but
it's in there. That's defiled. We don't want
to drink something that's going to take over our bodies and make
our intestines come outside. We want to drink pure water with
no bugs in it. So you get the point. The point
is, is that as we define pure, a lot of times we would take
it just from the first step and that there is this outward appearance.
Friends, sometimes water, though it might not be clear, may be
pure. And sometimes water that is clear
may be defiled. And this is the argument that
Paul begins to construct for us here in regard to these false
teachers who profess and by the outwardness of their proximity
and possibly their life, they probably Look pretty pure. Like much of us, many of us. But pure is not having right
words, purity is not doing the right thing, purity, though,
if you're truly pure, the outcome of your doing is doing the right
thing. Being pure is not an abstinence of sin. Because many people abstain
from sinful acts, but they're not pure, they're defiled. Many
people like the Pharisees walk the chalk line of obedience to
the concepts and the precepts of God's God's law, but they
do not have purity for their hearts are far from him. They
say the right thing. So purity is not having obedience. Purity is not just doing that
what you're told to do. Slaves throughout history, even
in our country, obeyed out of fear of their master, not respect
and affection. And so that obedience did not
prove a pure heart the whole time that they were thinking,
man, if I could get out of here, if even I had the skill to do it.
Some of them. So obedience is not a mark of
purity, neither is speaking the right words or having the right
thoughts or knowing the right truth. In an academic sense,
everybody can have, you know, what do they call those things
back in the day when you didn't read the book, but you wanted
to pretend like you did? Puss notes. Yeah. Anybody can have the cliffs notes
of right doctrine. Anybody can have the study Bible
of all study Bibles. You can get the ESV study Bible.
And when you're done reading it, you can build a house out
of it. And so, you know, anybody can have the right information.
Anybody can be a Bible answer, man, if you just want to regurgitate
the facts. But is the regurgitation of the facts and being right
and the understanding of the scripture actually purity? No. Purity is not honesty. Though
all pure people are honest, just because someone's honest and
of goodwill, friends, these are the people that are always here
telling me, well, there's nothing wrong with me. I'm right before
the Lord. You are? How? Well, you know, I don't
lie or cheat, steal, smoke, dance, drink or go out with girls who
do. And all this different stuff. I'm a pretty straight person
and I'm an honest person. I'm honest in my dealings. And
they'll stand before you and say, I'm cool with God. They're not pure. As a matter
of fact, you'll see in Scripture, if you look, That the defiled
person says, I have no need of repentance. The defiled person
is the person who says, I'm right before God and I do these things.
The defiled person, like the rich young ruler, is the one
who says, I've kept all these since my youth. And then his
heart was put to the test, the inside, that microscopic, invisible
reality that was in his heart when Jesus said, take everything
that you truly love. You say you love me and righteousness,
then give everything you own away. And he ran off. He moved away quickly to get
away from that. He was dejected. He cannot bear
to stand the sight of those people. Purity is not having an affection
for one another. I mean, even Jesus says, don't
the pagans love their families? Do not the pagans give their
children something to eat? Does one of their children ask
for bread and give a steak? I mean, a snake, steak, bread and steak,
but a snake or stone. No. So even the world takes care
of their own, even the world has affection, even the lost
people of the world love their loved ones and agonize over their
pain and suffering and their loss. So these are the works which
can be displayed and sometimes mistakenly taken as pure. Now,
yes, these are the works that will prove purity, but these
works don't prove purity. But not having these works will
disprove purity. And we see that in 1 John, we
see that in Ephesians, we see that everywhere, we see it right
here. Because then Paul goes to the end of this and says,
they are detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good works. They
profess to know God, but they deny him by their works. What
are their works? I think most of what Paul is
dealing with here when he talks about the works of these unbelievers,
of these false teachers, is that their motives behind their message
are defiled. So these two groups of people.
The pure and the defiled. Let's look at it. This might
be one of the quickest sermons we ever hear today. Probably
not. The outward expression, I take
all of this from the text here, and especially that text that
I just read, the outward expression of those who are defiled looks
a lot like this, according to this text here. And I've sort
of listed it out. Twenty three plus six sub points,
they're going to be fast. Here we go. One, they are not
true children of God. If Titus is a true child of God
and a common faith, then these who are defiled are not a true
child of God. So he starts with that. He ends with that when
he says they're unbelievers, they're unfit. So they're not
true children of God. Those who are not pure in heart
are not sound in the faith. See, when you start to think
about yourself, start to think about others, start to think
about the reality of what church has been in your life through
the years. Where do you see this taking
place? Paul has not said anything about
the world apart from the church. He's talking about those who
profess to be in the church. As a matter of fact, in First
Corinthians, Paul is very clear that God alone is the judge of
the outside world, but that the church should govern and judge
and discern their own. That we should make judgments
based on profession versus observation. That when we see someone who
professes to be born again, who claims the banner of Christ and
stands among the brethren, and their life does not pursue such
things that their profession is a lie, and that they must
be called out on it. Why? Because we'll get to that. They're not sounding the faith.
The defiled are not above reproach. There's always some blame laid
to them. You might think, well, what are
they doing here? Are they sleeping around? Are they stealing? No,
they're teaching garbage. They're causing division through
misinterpreted doctrine that they start to hold on as their
pets, and they stroke it and feed it and milk it and play
with it and cuddle it, and they want to share it. They want everybody
in there to pat the bunny of depraved teaching. Isn't it cute? Look how cute this is. Can you
see that? Can you see somebody? You know,
Easter time's coming up and people sell rabbits around here. Rabbits,
chickens and ducks. It's the largest expression of
animalistic genocide I've ever seen. Because they don't live
but a few days. It's like goldfish at the fair. They should just kill them and
hand them out like sardines. Could you imagine somebody coming
into church and they got a bunny and they said, look at my little
bunny. And it's all cute and all flurry. And you can see his
little back and his little tail. And then when it raises the head
and looks at you, it's got this horrified, blazing red eyes and
fangs and this intent eye to come out. Would you pet that? No, you wouldn't pet that. I
mean, we'd want to look at it like, wow, it's a fundraiser. Come see the demon bunny. Why did I say that? But if it were that obvious.
We wouldn't have a problem with it, would we? What we have is
a very loving, kind, affectionate brethren type mindset people,
and they're in the church and they're of the church and among
the church and they love people and everybody that goes along
with them, they love and they have this beautiful little bunny
and they call it truth and you pet it and you love it. And then
when you find out it's actually not true, you've cuddled it so
much, it's hard to say that it's wrong. You love it more than you love
Christ. You love it more than they love
truth. And you don't know these. These are what? Good people. Friends, if there's ever been
the dumbest argument in the world, and I'm not one to usually say
that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard because it hurts people's
feelings, but today I will say that just in an ambiguous way,
if the shoe fits, throw it out the window. Don't put it on.
But when you say, well, you just don't know they're good people,
that's dumb. That's ignorance, that's not
looking at the elephant in the room that's got you pinned into
the corner of ignorance and you smelling and you can feel him,
but you won't say it's there. Now, there's no elephant in here.
I'm free to turn around. I mean, you just get with it
being good people. Means that you're from the South.
It doesn't have anything to do with your location in eternity. Doesn't have anything to do with
the heart that God has given you. It just means you're from
the South. And the longer you hang out with
these said good rabbit farmers, they are wonderful people to
hang around until you tell them that the rabbit is ugly. When
you say that's the ugliest rabbit I've ever seen. Now see, I used
to give this illustration in the context of infants. And I
used to talk about how there's never been an ugly baby born
to the parents. And I have met one brother who
told me one time, man, when this boy was born, he was ugly. I
was scared to death. But he was 14 at the time and he turned
out OK. But he was he was like, this is the ugliest child I've
ever seen. I'm like, don't tell your wife that. Oh, we got divorced
over, you know. So, I mean, there is the occasional exception to
the rule. But generally speaking, most
parents think their children, the most beautiful things that
ever lived. Because they're blind with this weird affection and
this chemical imbalance from the labor and all this kind of
stuff, and they're seeing things that aren't there. Infants aren't
necessarily that attractive, but they grow up and they become
cute. But when you call somebody's, have you ever gone to the hospital
to see a brand new baby or go to someone's house and visit
a new baby? You want to really see depravity and selfishness
of pride. Look at that baby when everybody,
oh, and you go, oh, my heavens, that is the most horrible looking
child I have ever seen. I'm going to lay hands on, I'll
pray for y'all people. You call somebody's baby ugly,
they get ugly. They turn into the ugliness that
that baby possesses. So I decided, well, that really
got people upset, so I'll just use rabbits instead. The truth
applies. When you start calling somebody's
pet a lie, they begin to show their true colors. Because even
if people are our enemies, when we are in Christ, we are to love
them and die for them. The biggest false teachers in
the world, we should lay down our faces and pray for their
repentance. And if it costs us our salvation, which it can't,
as Paul prayed for his enemies, he says, if I could give up my
salvation for the sake of my Jewish brothers, I would. Do
you love people that much? So when the so-called false teachers
are confronted and they hate you, they prove they are not
in Christ. When people hate you because
of truth, they are not his. Now, wait a minute. I know some
people who have gotten angry. I said I didn't say got angry
and been hateful and then came around. I'm talking about people
that just writ you off. Now, that's poor grammar, but
you know what I mean. They just write you off. You're gone. Don't
have anything to do with you. And then they'll take, as a pied
piper would, and toot their little horn on down the street with
their bunny farm, and they'll set up shop someplace else. Well,
Paul says that can't happen. They must be silenced. Because
these defiled people are not above reproach. And they're not
humble. They're not sound in the faith.
They're not sober. They're not patient. The qualification
of the elders must be patient and gentle and hospitable and
not drunk on wine and not violent. All these things, not quick tempered,
but must be holy and self-disciplined. Defiled people are not holy.
Defiled people do not have holy affections. They do not have
holy affections for the Word of God. They don't stand on Sola
Scriptura. They don't know what they believe.
They don't care what they believe. Defiled people. are not patient. They are not content, they work
for dishonest gain, as Paul says here. Defiled people are not
lovers of good, but lovers of self. Defiled people do not hold
fast to the trustworthy word, but care more about the culture. They care more about the things
that people will think rather than who God is. I've heard people
teach this and maybe you can resonate with it because it does
come to mind. If you ever lost a loved one, I've heard people
say in what do you call them here in visitations or wakes
or other parts of most other parts of the country, they call
wakes where you sort of stay up all night with the body. And
people just visit, visit, visit, visit the family, take care of
things. And at wakes, you always hear these older people, well-meaning
people. And they say to the young people
in the room, don't worry about grandpa. He's looking down at
you right now. And then in the next few weeks,
you see this child change. And you meet with the family
two or three weeks later after everything else is over and you
start to see this and they'll say, you just won't believe how
the Lord's used the death of Grandpa with little Johnny. He's
a different kid. He's a he's a wonderful child
now. He's he's living his life before
his grandpa because he knows his grandpa is looking down on
him. You don't want to disappoint his grandpa. Since when did our
concern be with what people of this world thought about us over
the holiness of God looking into our very souls? Do not be fearful
of what man can do, but have fear for God who can cast both
body and soul into hell. But understand that true love
drives away fear. We do not scowl and shirk back
in fear and trembling. We stand bold with fear and trembling
as a child does for his father. And we call him Abba, Daddy. So they don't hold fast to the
trustworthy word. The defiled person cannot teach others. And
I say, well, I see them teaching all the time. Well, they're not
teaching. They're deceiving. There's a difference. I believe
teaching, although, yes, we can argue that the process of teaching
information out, information in, you know, I'm talking about
teaching. If it's not true, it's a deceit.
It's a lie. And if you give out lies, it's
not teaching. It's deceiving. There's a difference
in teaching and deceiving when it comes to God's word. Defiled
people do not teach, they deceive. They are insubordinate, therefore,
to the world. I just picked this text apart and listed them out.
They're insubordinate to the Word of God. And because of that,
their very existence is worthless. It's vain. They're empty talkers. Everything they say, even when
it's true, is worthless. Worthless. They are liars. They are traditionalists. They
are legalists. You know what that means? What's
a traditionalist? The myths. The Jewish myths and the commands
of the people. The circumcision party. They
held to the commands, I would say, to the Mishnah over the
gospel. I would say they held to the laws of the land of their
Jewish heritage rather than the laws of God that persevere through
Jesus Christ who fulfilled them all and says they will not pass
away. A legalist is one who thinks
they're justified by keeping such things. They're identified
by their culture. Cretan, a prophet, one of their
own, says the Cretans are always liars. What else? Evil beasts
and lazy gluttons. And Paul says this testimony
is true. Epimenides actually said that. Who was a Cretan? And so these Christians, especially
these Christian Jews or professing Jewish Christians, were actually
falling into the culture in which they lived. They were becoming
culturally relevant. They were coming to a place where
they were going to be of the people and in the world, but
not of it. But yet they did everything they
could to look like the people around them. What's the felt
need of your community? Who cares? I'm being honest with
you. Who cares what the felt need is? What's the blind need
of our community? Jesus Christ and the preached
word of the gospel. I don't care what they feel like
they need. I know what they need. When our children get sick and
they have to go to the doctor and they hear that horrifying
word, one of three, hospital, injection or fluids. I mean, you know, it's just if
you don't get through it, you're going to die. So what you do
is you end up one person with his knee on this arm, another
nurse over here, this somebody with their hands around their
throat, take the legs down. And, you know, the biggest orderly
in the hospital comes and sits right on them. So you can get
a needle that big into a vein. We saw the way it was when I
was a kid. No pointing fingers. Why? Why don't we just give them
a cookie and hug them real tight and make them feel good? No, because that's not what they
need. What they want is not to have stuff stuck into their bodies.
What they want is to go home. What they want is to be set free.
What they want is to not have fear. What they want is not what
they need. And if they don't get what they
need, they perish. And if we'll do that for the physical well-being
of our children, why not do that for the spiritual and eternal
destiny of the lost world? We don't care what our felt needs
are. That doesn't mean we don't have
empathy for someone who's hungry and give them food. But what
good is a food that perishes when the gospel is so far from
that bread that we even make that bread ultimate? What if
there's nothing for any of us to eat? What do we give them?
Are there not Christians among the perishing? In the physical
sense, you're looking at us. We're perishing. We're dying. So these defiled people, defiled
people are identified by their culture. You look and you go,
they're just like the world, but they're nice, they're good,
they're honest. You see how that works? You look
just like everybody else, but you got a Jesus sticker on you.
You got a big fat Bible and a bumper sticker and you might even have
crocheted a nice needlepoint thing that says trust in the
Lord and you got it over your front door. You should put those
things in your house, I agree. But it's the gospel what defines
you. Is it your job? Is it your career?
Is it your focus? Is it your ministry? Is it your
plans? Is it your teaching? Is it your church? Is it the
number of people in your seats? Is it the amount of money in
your bank account? The number of children you have? The number of men who
come out of under your teaching? What is it? The number of salvations
that you can taunt? The number of bread that you
put out? The amount of water? The amount of wells that you've
dug? How many times you give to a person that can't have shoes? A defiled person divides relationships,
they tear up homes, they're prideful and they're hungry for power.
They are, according to Paul, apostate because they have turned
away from the truth right there. A defiled person has a defiled
mind. That means they don't even think
right. Romans 1, for God, those who by the suppression of the
truth, what? Reject the gospel, reject the
light of God. They worship the creature rather
than the Creator. God turns them over to a reprobate
mind to do that which is unnatural. And then Heaven forsakes. All
this isn't culturally relevant. Then he lists out some things,
namely sexual morality and homosexuality. Their minds are defiled. They
can't even see. Their consciences are defiled. They are blind. And when they're
even doing good things, all they can do is contemplate how it
helps them. And you're being harsh. I'm not
being harsh. That's what Paul says. Well, what's wrong with... What
if we do things that are right toward people? Well, good, then
they'll be the blessed one for it. But why do you do it? How
many pats on the back do you give yourselves when you do what's
good for others? It doesn't get us crowns to feel
good for what we do. We earn the intimacy of worship,
the crown. We earn the crowns of worship.
by submitting to the reality that Jesus Christ alone can affect
these things in us. And we love him for our righteous
works. We come to the light of Christ
because the heart that we have been given is good. We don't
get a good heart for coming to the light, we get a good heart
so that we can come to the light so that when we do come to the
light that our works will be seen as carried out in God. John
3. That our works will be seen that
God had created us in Christ Jesus, for we are his workmanship
to do good deeds which God created before the world began for us
to walk in. A defiled person. is an unbelieving
person. They are unbelieving. But to
the pure, all things are pure. But to the defiled and unbelieving,
nothing is pure. But both their minds and their
consciences are defiled. They profess to know God, but
they deny Him by their words. So their confession is false. Their profession of faith, their
sinner's prayer, their walking out, whatever it may be. Gosh,
do I even say this? Yes. I watched last night at
1130. Rocky, my infant daughter, to sleep, I watched an old 1960ish
Billy Graham crusade. Nothing's changed. I've always
thought, well, when he was younger, he didn't preach. He did not
preach anything. Seven-part sermon, it was 25
minutes, and it was on how one can have a good, healthy, happy
home. And at the end, when the hundreds
came, they were proclaimed saved as the video camera zoomed in
on them. And you could see them pecking
one another and holding hands, passing notes and laughing. And
is that really coming to faith in Jesus Christ? Let's go P.O.T.V. Let the Lord work. What does
Paul conclude here? They're detestable. Worthless,
disobedient, unfit, nothing about them is good. Even their good
words, even their good tries, even their good words are defiled.
The righteousness is like filthy rags and it has no credit to
them. But to the pure. But to the pure, all things are
pure. What does that mean? How is it
so? Sinful things are pure? No. Get
with it. Not sinful. All things that we
do are pure. All things that we say are pure.
All things that we eat are pure. All things, not sinful things.
We abstain from those things. We fight those things. So in
the good works and the good deeds and the ministry that we do,
it is pure. In the good works and the good
deeds and the ministry that the defiled do, it is defiled. It's
worthless. It's empty. It's nothing. We
don't say they're good people. There is no good people. There's
a good savior who saves a wicked people and calls them good because
his righteousness is credited to them. And then from that day
forward, we live unto purity for the sake of purity, to the
praise of his glorious grace through which we get the purity. But understand that it doesn't
say to the pure. Or the one who does pure things,
it identifies the pure as a people to the pure, not the pure, not
the purely acting people, not the pure thinking people, he
says to the pure, not that not the pure acts, the people who
do pure acts, because it's not about that, is it? He's not talking
about the actions, though he is. He's talking about the essence,
the fullness of one's being, the redemption through Jesus
Christ and his perfection. Then, therefore, all that is
done is pure. Now, we know what sin is and
when we commit it, it's not pure. But in the actions of our living
and working out our salvation, all that we do is for his glory.
And because of that, it is pure. And when we don't, it is sin
and we repent of it as his people. What we should, how should we
be pure? We should be pure in our thoughts, pure in our deeds,
pure in our desires. What I like to say, holy affections,
as Jonathan Edwards so easily puts it. What are our holy affections? A holy affections means that
we love all which is pure. We strive for all that which
is pure. We long for that which is pure
and we long for the day when Christ will make us fully pure,
understand that purity. by our statement, by our action,
is not purity. Purity by God's action is purity. Purity by God's statement, that's
called justification. We are justified before God as
his enemies to become his friends. He sees us as wicked and dead
and lost, and he says, no longer are you dead, no longer are you
wicked, no longer are you lost. You're saved, you're mine, you're
holy. It's done. And he's just and
righteous in doing so because he put our sins and our iniquity
and our guilt and our death on Jesus, the God of the universe,
who spoke and the whole thing came to be. And then he created
Mary and he put himself in the womb and he became a child and
he became a human being. And he lived fully, wholly righteous,
obedient and willfully obedient to the father. And he willfully
died on the cross to propitiate the wrath of God against us.
And now we have been declared pure. Don't ever, ever, ever
measure your purity by the actions of your will. But test your purity by the actions
of your will. You see the difference? Look
how saved I am. Look how I walk. Look what I
think about. Man, I'm so far from where I
was. No. Oh, God, see where I am.
Except by thy grace, I'd be back where I started. How much do you have to steal
to be a thief? The lowest common coin. And no matter how long we've
lived in pure thoughts and actions and desires, The minute we get
frustrated in traffic, we have fallen again. So where is our
purity come from? From Christ alone. Faith alone. What does this purity look like? Well, it includes humility. We
see there it includes kindness and hospitality, respect. Why? Because we who are pure know
the one true God. John 17. This is eternal life
that they know you, the one true God and the son whom you have
sent. We know, as the pure ones, the one true God, and because
of that, we desire to reflect his works by living in the light. So we strive for righteousness. We don't practice lawlessness.
We practice righteousness. The introduction to Titus is
very much like the introduction to 1 John. If we say we walk
in the light, but we walk in darkness, we lie. We do not practice
the truth. Are we practicing the truth?
Who is the truth? Jesus Christ, the righteous.
We practice and holding fast to the confession of our faith
in the one who is truth, who is righteous, who is pure and
who is always pure and who gives us such things by the grace of
his mercy, by the will of his father. Period. Done. It's over. It is finished. A pure person wants to be holy
because God says, Be holy for I'm holy. We want to reflect
the pureness of who God is. The pure see their sin. The pure
see the sin in their lives and the pure desire repentance by
faith. And they act in it by faith. The pure understand that it is
the consummation of all things for them. Now, what do I mean
by that? When we think about the gospel,
we do what's what I call theological hang gliding. We jump off the
cliff and we're so enamored by the beauty of the scene, we just
keep flying. And in our minds, because our
time is so is so restrictive on our ability to see past our
lives. We just think that the Christian
life is just this forever soaring over the cliffs of beauty and
that we're just going to fly around forever. Oh, beautiful
Lord is beautiful. Lord is beautiful. Grace is always
worship. And we want to soar there. But we know that the soaring
is not the destiny. The walk in Christ is not the
destiny, it's the journey, it is the place in the intermedium.
It's intermittent. So our beauty of beholding that
which God is creating us and continuing to work in us is just
a temporary day. The landing of our righteous
plane is the day of the Lord when all the work is done and
we no longer strive to be holy, for we will be made holy as He
is holy when we see Him face to face. We'll never again fly
around with the expectation of glorification. It will be conceived
for us. And so when I say that the purity
of the Christian is the culmination or the consummation of all things,
that's what we are waiting for. We're not waiting for Christ
to sit us in front of Him with the sinful flesh we have. We're
waiting to be the body of the sinless Savior who is our King,
who is our Head, who suffered our sins, and He's not going
to take a bribe that's defiled. So purity, even in this life
as we strive for it, is anticipation and affection for the day when
we stand right before God. Friends, this is the power over
sin where we can say, I won't think that anymore. I won't say
that. I'm not going to look at that. I'm going to throw this
away. I'm not going to think that way. I'm not going to be
angry. You can do that, church. You have the power of God in
you to walk away from your sin. You know we do, because you know
you're about to do it. If it's just a little bit of
a nanosecond there, you and your conscience, you know you're getting
mad and you go to say something and you hear, if ever so softly,
in the back of your mind, the Spirit of God saying, don't go
there. It is our election. It's why we were saved. It is
our redemption. Jesus, as Christ led the church
and gave himself up for her, that he might present her holy
and blameless without blemish. Christ died for our purity. No wicked, sinful, depraved wretch
will stand before the Father. Only righteous, holy, pure and
glorified saints. I misspoke. Those who are wretched,
sinful, depraved wretches will stand before the Father as Christ
casts them into the lake of fire. The redeemed of God are redeemed. The pure are full of the knowledge
of his grace. That's how we are pure. We are
full of the knowledge of his grace. 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, purity, holiness. Perfection, righteousness, sanctification. Beauty. And the godliness and hope of
eternal life, which God in their lives promised before the ages
begin. The pure are full of the knowledge
of his grace. You want to know why? Lord, help
me. You want to know why reformed
teaching, evangelical teaching, Protestant teaching, historical
gospel, apostolic teaching, exposition is so damnable to the world at
large and their minds. It's because the full knowledge
of the grace of God goes as far as this. God wants me so bad. He throws himself on the cross.
and begs me to come and hopes I will. What is that? Where is that God in Scripture? Is that a savior? That's like
the Coast Guard getting in a helicopter in Jacksonville and just there's
a wreck somewhere at sea. Where is it? I don't know, but
I hope I find it. OK, fine. Just keep going. Just go and
go and go. We're just looking and looking
and looking and the radio's blaring and they go, what's that noise?
Turn it off and put on some jams. At least get some music while
we're looking for the lost. Now, they get a call. Yeah, they
they look, they get a call. There's a shipwreck here at this
particular place and they go boom and they get it and they
save people. And God said to the son, there's a lost people
from Adam and Eve until there. You go now. who never lost promise
before the ages began and at the proper time manifested in
his word through the preaching with which I have entrusted by
the command of God, our Savior. Jesus says, I came to seek and
save the lost. And on the cross, he said it
is finished. He accomplished all that the father sent him
to do, not only in holiness, not just for the blanket. I saved
a church. He came and saved the church.
And if he didn't, you better find another savior because a
potential savior is not a savior. He's a failure. He's a loser
with a capital L, not for Lord, but loser. He lost. Why is that so hard? Why is it
so bad when you say God looked into your wicked heart, saw you
dead and unable to save yourself? And by the grace of His glorious
mercy and the love with which He loves you, He reached down
like an eternal defibrillator and He woke you up and He said,
Lazarus, come out. And then when you came out, He
said, unbind him and let him go. He's free because the Son
has set him free. Why is that so bad? Well, that's
God. God's maniacal. Maniacal to be
subject as the creature among the ones who rejected Him and
spat upon Him and pulled His beard out and called Him names
and ridiculed Him and beat Him to the point where He was unnoticeable
as a human being. And then He got on the cross
and said, O Father, forgive them. The God of the universe subjected
grace through his own flesh that he might be worshipped for the
praise of his glorious grace. That's maniacal. He's worthy
of such praise. He's not worthy to die and suffer
and submit himself to the billions of eternal riches who will be
saved by his grace for all of eternity on six hours when the
Father turns his back on him. And thus he experiences the fullness
of God's wrath for all of eternity times however many people he
saves just in that brief moment. And I love doing math. And I've
done that math with a very conservative scale, if you'd like to see what
it looks like one day. Why don't people love that? Because
their minds are defiled and their consciences are defiled. And
they like a gospel that puts them at the center of that. They
like a gospel that says, there's the bread, just go eat it. And
they like to be able to say, I'm so glad that I did what I
was supposed to do. And they like to be able to say,
aren't you glad that you did the right thing? Aren't you glad that you came
to your senses? Aren't you glad you said the
right words? Aren't you glad you prayed the right prayer?
Aren't you glad you walked the right aisle? Aren't you glad As there are many a people who
will walk in and say a prayer and confess Christ and he will
say, depart from me, you workers of iniquity into the devil's
hell. The pure do not say, I have no
need of repentance. The pure hate sin and they love
good. They delight in the light, not
the darkness, they put off the old self. and put on the new
man which is theirs in Christ. They set no place at the table
for sin in the flesh. They point out darkness. They
are not entertained by it. They don't laugh at it, they
weep over it. The pure hold fast by faith to Christ and they do
not live in unbelief. They are content instead of covetous.
The pure want to look like the light. They want to be above
reproach because when they are, the holiness of God in his name
is at stake. They do not want to be identified like the Cretans
or by the world. They want to be set apart for
the very word holy means to be set apart. They do not want to
bring reproach upon themselves because when they do, they bring
reproach upon the very body of Jesus Christ and his church.
thus making Christ a partner in their sin, holding him again
to public contempt and shame, and crucifying him once again
on the cross. And that's not my words, those are the words
of the writer of Hebrews. And so therefore, there is now no
sacrifice that remains for them, but just a fearful expectation
of judgment. That's almost a direct quote. Pure people reflect a pure Savior,
Church. Pure people. Reflect the pure Savior, because
Jesus bought us. He bought the pure, he redeemed
us to be the pure and he empowers us to be pure. In closing, listen
to the words of Paul. As he speaks to the Thessalonians.
Finally, then, brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus
that as you receive from us how you ought to walk and to please
God just as you are doing, that you do so more and more, for
you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus,
for this is the will of God, your sanctification. That you
abstain from sexual immorality, that each one of you know how
to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion
of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God, that no one
transgress and wrong his brother in this manner, because the Lord
is an avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and
solemnly warned you, for God has not called us for impurity,
but in holiness. Therefore, whoever disregards
this disregards not man, but God, who gives his Holy Spirit
to you. So I leave that for us as an
encouragement and as a warning. Let this sermon and this text,
as we move to these next things, not roll out of your consciousness,
but let them, by the power of God's grace and through the power
of his Holy Spirit, see deep into you and always be front
of your mind, in front of your worship, that you do not disregard
the teaching of the gospel through Titus. Because when we do, we do not
disregard your pastor or this letter or Paul. We disregard
the very God who sent it. And my prayer for you is that
you would see. See that to you, the pure, that all things are
pure. But to the defiled. There is nothing worth even seeing. Let us pray for those who are
fallen. Let us pray for those who stand among us and proclaim
to be like us when their works are detestable and disprove their
very confession. Let us rebuke them sharply that
they may come to a knowledge of the truth and grow in their
faith. Friends, if that shoe fits, throw
it out and repent and believe the gospel. Oh, dear Father, we thank you so much. You are an amazing God with an
amazing love and an amazing power and amazing grace. We are unworthy to even understand
and to receive. Lord, you preach through your
word in such a way it overwhelms me. I pray it has overwhelmed all
in its hearing, that we be shaken, shaken not into a hole of despair,
shaken into vibrancy in life through the gospel of Christ.
Father, save those who sit with a blindness that, Lord, today
you have brought them to an understanding of the truth, both child and
adult, male and female. That we might live as a pure
people, that we might be patient with those who are defiled, that
we might see you work in us and through us to bring to life those
who are dead. Father, we worship you. We worship
you. Because you are worthy of all
worship. Thank you for saving us. Thank
You for Your Word. Thank You for Your Son. In Jesus'
name we pray, Amen.