OK, I think that's set up now. Right. Well, I want to have a
short break from Isaiah. I don't know how long, but we'll
see how we go. And I wanted to turn to a New Testament passage
for a week or two. We'll see how we go. And it's
long been in my mind to bring some messages from the Epistle
to Titus. So we're going to have a short
break in the Epistle to Titus. You know the difference between
the Old Testament and the New Testament, they both speak exactly
the same message but in different ways. In the Old Testament the
truth of Gospel grace is to a large extent implicit. It's as if in the New Testament the
message is absolutely explicit. It's as if there is the picture
drawn and it's utterly clear, it's very clear. The size, the
shape of the building is very clear. But the Old Testament
comes at it from different angles and colors and shows us that
it's all part of the revelation of God. But this, this New Testament
is explicit, it's explicit truth. And what prompted me to come
here was that we live in a world where there is widespread atheism,
or at least so they call it. But even so, there's a lot of
religion and an awful lot that calls itself Christianity. And
you'll come across very sincere people who think they're Christians,
And they welcome the idea that God is bringing together all
sorts of different flavours of belief and Christianity. And,
oh, isn't this a wonderful thing that God is doing, bringing together
all of these different flavours? And there's this ecumenical spirit
that is seeking a common denominator. Let's forget about all the things
where we might disagree, because they don't think about, they
don't believe that, and we don't believe that, but let's forget
about the things that we don't believe together and try and
find one or two things that we can come down to, oh, there's
a God, yes, okay, there's a God, we'll believe, we'll believe
in the one God. There's an ecumenical spirit around, seeking this common
denominator, and it's the downfall of many once-faithful churches. Up and down this land, and I
know in other countries, there are many churches where, until
not too long ago, the truth of gospel grace was faithfully preached. You look there now, it isn't.
Publishing organizations that 30 years ago were faithful to
the true gospel are now utterly compromised with this spirit
of ecumenical compromise, with that which isn't the truth. But
the scriptures are clear. It's not that the scriptures
have multiple shades of what you can believe. They're absolutely
clear. It's absolutely clear. There's
no question for any doubt or any variation and so I want to
spend a few messages in Titus where Paul the Apostle underlines
the distinctiveness of true biblical Christian faith. Now Paul had
left Titus in Crete. Titus was this young Greek convert,
a Gentile convert, and he'd left him in Crete. Crete, you can
go there for your holidays today. It's in the Mediterranean Sea,
on the bottom end of the Aegean Sea, between the southern end
of Italy and the southern end of... No, sorry, between the
southern end of Greece and the southern end of Turkey, and it's
their lovely island in the Mediterranean Sea. And there were many, many
nominal believers there in this day, and Paul had left Titus
there amidst these disorderly embryonic churches to establish
a biblical structure, to establish sound doctrine, to establish
gospel precepts. Why? Why? Why? Because it is the purpose of
God in this present created order in which we live to restore the
kingdom to Christ. That's the purpose of God. In
the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, Genesis
1, Genesis 2, you can read it, in the beginning when God created,
the kingdom of God was the creation of God. It was the world where
Adam and the things that God had created, and Eve, that's
where they lived. That was the kingdom of God.
But in the fall, Satan usurped. He took, he grasped, he stole
that authority. He stole that kingship over it. He captured it by the fall. And
immediately, God regenerated Adam and Eve. You know, we read
in Genesis 3.15 when the animals were slain and he clothed Adam
and Eve to cover their nakedness. Not their own attempts. He, God,
clothed Adam and Eve. He regenerated them then in the
garden. And from then onwards, there
were, right up to this present day, and so it will be to the
end, there are two parallel kingdoms running in this world. There's
the kingdom of Antichrist, which is predominant everywhere you
look. Everywhere is the kingdom of Antichrist. And there's the
kingdom of Christ, the kingdom of God in Christ. And they're
in a rival situation. This is the message of the book
of Revelation. But, you know, there's no question what's going
to succeed. The kingdom of God is going to
succeed. You remember the book I wrote
in Revelation, I called it the kingdom of God triumphant, because
that kingdom will be triumphant. It's certain success is established
in the eternal purposes of God. As Paul writes to the Ephesians
this time, he talks about the eternal purpose which he, God,
purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord, and if God purposed it
because of who God is, It will come to pass. And it is accomplished. How is it accomplished? How is
the kingdom of God triumphant accomplished? In the redemption
of the elect of God by Christ. He redeems his people. Now, in
the last days, and the last days are from when Christ returned
to glory nearly 2,000 years ago, right up to now, right on to
the end. In these last days, Christ walks among his church. Revelation chapter one. and then in his letters, two
and three, he walks among his church, and it's commissioned
by him, the church is commissioned by him, to bear witness to the
truth of gospel grace. Where are we now? We're in this
world, but we're separated from the world, we're not of it. We're
in wilderness separation from the kingdom of Antichrist, until
Christ comes again in final judgment. So how should the true Church
of Christ be in this world in these last days? How should we
be? How should we live? What should we do? What testimony
should we bear? The reason the epistles are written
is to tell us. That's the reason for the epistles.
Explicit teaching, defining truth, right the way through from Romans,
all the epistles of Paul, the epistle of James, the epistles
of Peter, the epistle of Jude, the epistles of John, they are
all there to teach the church how we should be in this age,
these last days until Christ comes again. They define the
truth of God. They define the reaction to it
that God requires of his people. And here in Titus chapter 1 verses
1 to 4, that's what I want to look at this morning, we see
a solid doctrinal foundation preached, we see a faith that
works, and we see a faith that unites. That's the three points
this morning. The title of the message is the
faith of God's elect. Where do I get that from? First
verse, Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ
according to the faith of God's elect and the knowledge of truth
which is after godliness. The faith of God's elect. Now,
Paul, the apostle, was a Jew by birth. His name was Saul.
He was Saul of Tarsus. But he took the name Paul, which
is the Gentile name for Saul, the Gentile equivalent. He took
that because he was the apostle to the Gentiles. And he knew
this young man Titus very well. And he had a very high regard
for Titus. If you read the other epistles,
you'll keep seeing mention Paul makes of Titus. Titus helped
him. Titus supported him in his ministry.
Titus was a preacher also. Titus ministered to Paul's needs. Titus, I think, often actually
wrote the words of the epistle as Paul dictated those words
of the epistle. Titus and Paul knew one another
very, very well. Titus was an uncircumcised Greek,
but evidently he was greatly trusted and valued by Paul. So
why do we have this introduction? Why is he saying as if he'd never
met him? Paul, if you didn't know, I'm a servant of God and
an apostle of Jesus Christ. And if you didn't know, it's
according to the faith of God's elect and blah, blah, blah, blah.
Why did he do that? Titus knew Paul really well.
He was intimately acquainted with everything about Paul and
his ministry. Why did he do it? I'll tell you
why. He wrote it because the Holy Spirit prompted him to write
it. This is the Holy Spirit teaching us the people of God. This is
the Holy Spirit. This is not Paul telling Titus
what he didn't already know about Paul. It's the Holy Spirit teaching
us. He says that Paul, he styles
himself a servant of God. In other places, a bond servant. And the picture there is the
willing bond servant. You know in the Old Testament,
slavery. laws, there was the jubilee when the slave was to
go free but many slaves loved their master and didn't want
to leave their master's household and they had this, strange to
us, this custom of piercing the ear of the slave piercing the
ear of the slave who wanted to be a willing bondservant. I don't
want to leave. I want to be my master's servant. And this is what Paul was, a
servant of God. As Saul the Pharisee, before
he met Christ on the Damascus road, he fulfilled what Jesus
said in John 16 verse 2. In John 16 verse 2, Jesus is
telling his disciples the night before he went to the cross,
he said, the days will come when whosoever kills you will think
that he does God a service. The days will come, you followers
of me, the Lord Jesus Christ, the days will come when the people
that kill you will think that they're doing service to God,
to stamp out this religion, and Saul the Pharisee was one such,
and he was on his way to Damascus, on the Damascus Road, to do that
very thing, to bind those that call themselves Christians, and
to take them to Jerusalem, and to kill them, to have them killed
and to stamp out this thing that he regarded as a complete distortion
and corruption of the scriptures that they had. But God arrested
him. The power of God in the gospel. You know, I'm not ashamed of
the gospel, said Paul, because he'd experienced it. It is the
power of God unto salvation to everyone that believes. You know,
no wonder he wrote that. He, Paul, had been going determined
to stamp out these Christians at Damascus. And the power of
God stopped him in his tracks and blinded him and caused him
to say, Lord, what would you have me to do? Now by grace and
the power of the gospel, Paul is willingly enlisted into God's
service as an apostle of Jesus Christ. What's an apostle of
Jesus Christ? There are those who claim that
they're apostles in these days. They're not. They're liars. They're
counterfeit. They're cheats. If you hear anybody
in these days saying that this man or that man is an apostle
of Jesus Christ, you know to run a mile from that. Have nothing
to do with it. It's a lie. The apostles, there were 12 of
them. There weren't even 13. You say, oh, well, what about
the one that they elected? When Judas went and hanged himself
after betraying Christ, didn't they elect Matthias? Yeah, you
read about him in the early part of Acts. And then what do you
read about him in the rest of the New Testament? Should I tell
you? Absolutely zero. Why? Because that wasn't God's
purpose. Who was the replacement for Judas
among the 12? Because in heaven, There are 12 patriarchs and 12
apostles around the throne of God, the 24 elders. There are
12. The one who replaced Judas was
Paul, the apostle Paul, as one born out of due time. The apostles
were the channels of divine truth from heaven in the early church.
That's what it is. They and they alone were the
channels of divine truth from heaven. The scriptures in the
New Testament as they're written, they're either written by an
apostle or written under the supervision of an apostle, such
as Mark, for example, and Luke. Written under the supervision
of apostolic authority. And they talk about, what do
they talk about? What do they major on? What is
the thing that they want to know nothing other than? It's the
faith of God's elect. As Paul said, I determined to
know nothing else among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. What's your creed, Paul? Jesus
Christ and Him crucified. But don't you preach the whole
counsel of God, Paul? You told the Ephesian elders
on the beach at Miletus in Acts chapter 20 that You hadn't shunned
to preach the whole counsel of God, and he says, there's no
difference, for the whole counsel of God is Jesus Christ. These are they, said Jesus, that
speak of me. These scriptures speak of the
Lord Jesus Christ. The channel of divine truth is
an apostle with the faith of God's elect, bringing spiritual
sight, faith, belief, which is common. Look at verse 4. to Titus,
my own son, after the common faith. What does he mean? Does
he mean the cheap, everybody's got it so it doesn't really,
you know, there's no value in it? No, not a bit. He means the
faith that all of God's people hold in common. You say, well,
there are so many differences. Not between the elect of God,
there are not. Not between true believers, there's not all of
these differences. No, there are not. Between true
believers there's the common faith of the elect of God that
is held between them. This is the people God has saved
out of this godless world and we hold the faith of God's elect
in common. What is then this faith of God's
elect? Now, in the bulletin I try to
summarize it in an article and it fills the full two columns,
but basically, and we haven't looked in detail at it recently,
but it's there, I've written it out in the bulletin. It's
tulip. You know what tulip is, don't
you? Total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement,
irresistible grace, the perseverance of the saints. You know, we don't
get our doctrine from catechisms, or creeds, or things. We get
our doctrine from the Scriptures, by the enlightenment of the Holy
Spirit. But nevertheless, there are things
that are helpful, to help us. And that helps us. What is the
faith of God's elect? Those that have the faith of
God's elect, they know, firstly, something of total depravity.
Total depravity. What's total depravity? It's
The clear teaching of Scripture, that in people, in the flesh
as we are, concerning the holiness and righteousness of God, we
have absolutely none. The judgment of the Word of God
on us in our natural state as we are, is that we're dead in
trespasses and sins. We're not just rather poorly,
we're not just on a sickbed in need of some medication, we're
dead. And it's pictured in Ezekiel's Valley of the Dry Bones. What
does it say of them? They were very dry. Very dry. These were long dead bones. These
were well beyond the capability of a good vet to revive them.
Well beyond it. They were dead. Dead. And we
are enough. This is what The faith of God's
elect teaches us. We know what we are. We know. Those who claim that you must
preach the free offer of the gospel to all men and give all
men a chance, they don't realize how dead all men are spiritually. There is no life there. They're
dead in trespasses and sins. You go down the mortuary and
you try and preach a sermon to the dead souls there in the mortuary
and see what reaction you'll get. None whatsoever. Why? Because they're dead. They're
dead. They can't hear you. They can't respond to you. They're
dead. They're dead. They're dead. Without spiritual
life in the flesh. Do you see yourself as that?
That's the faith of God's elect. Truly. I've often quoted it.
That hymn. A sinner is a sacred thing. How? The Holy Ghost has made
him so. It's the teaching of God. I can't
teach you it. I can't. It must be by the Holy
Spirit teaching you that we're dead in trespasses and sins.
That's the first point. Secondly, the faith of God's
elect is the faith that bows to God's unconditional election. God chose a people and put them
in Christ before the world began. Chosen in Christ before the world
was made. Chosen, given, redeemed in Christ
effectively by the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
Justified from all eternity in the Lamb. This is what he has
done, and it's God's decision. And the choice is God's choice,
because God is sovereign. His grace is sovereign grace. His grace is not something that
you can choose to pick up and put down as you... It's the power
of God is the gospel. And when the power comes to you,
it doesn't make you an offer. It arrests you and compels you,
just like it did with Paul. It bows to unconditional election. Just as Paul wrote to the Thessalonians,
we're bound to give thanks to God for you always, brethren,
beloved of God. How do you know, Paul, that they're
beloved of God? Because God has from the beginning chosen you
to salvation. How? How do we know? Through
sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth. They
believed the gospel. It's God, it says, in Romans
9, 18. Now listen to these words. Therefore has he, God, mercy
on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will, he hardeneth."
Don't forget that last phrase. Whom he will, if God has sovereignly
chosen a multitude to election, to salvation in Christ, he has
obviously chosen the rest not to be saved whom he will he hardens
and what does what does the child of this world say that's unfair
we can't have that but what does the faith of God's elect say
glory be to God glory be to God let God be true and every man
a liar let God be true God is true He chose his people and
put them in legal union with Christ before the foundation
of the world, and it's all of his grace, and none of it is
of the works of man. And the natural man says that's
not fair, but the faith of God's elect says, thus says the Lord,
thus says the Lord, and he is God, and I can't see things as
clearly as he has ordained them now, but I will, I know I will,
I know I will understand one day, I know when I'm in heaven,
I know then I will see, and because the picture that John has is
of all of his people in heaven, what are they doing? They're
praising God. They're not criticizing God. They're not asking, why
did you do it this way? They're praising him. Why? Because
they see it the way God sees it. Thirdly, thirdly, the faith
of God's elect is the faith that talks about redemption. Redemption
is buying back. It's paying the ransom price.
It's paying the ransom to release from captivity, the captivity
of sin. The ransom price is death. The ransom price is death. And
Christ, being the infinite Son of God and yet fully man, came
and redeemed. Who did he redeem? Everybody? To give everybody a chance? If
he redeemed everybody, everybody's redeemed. And there's no hell.
And there's no condemnation. But that isn't true. He redeemed
the elect and them alone. The ones He redeemed are His
people. His name was Jesus. He came to
save His people from their sins. By God in Christ in time, He
redeemed His people to make satisfaction. He didn't sweep things under
the carpet. God remained perfectly just in
His holiness. and yet justifier of his elect
who in the flesh are sinners. So that, so that, this is how
it works. This is scriptural. This is scriptural. In Acts 13 we read about Paul
preaching in Antioch of Pisidia. There were two Antiochs. There's
one in what is like now the north of Syria and then another one
over in what is now Turkey. and it was that one that he was
preaching. And it says there in verse 48, when the Gentiles
heard this, what did they hear? They heard the true preaching
of the gospel by Paul. When the Gentiles heard it, although
the Jews, many of them, had objected and sought to kill him, they
were glad, the Gentiles were glad. All of them? No. But they
glorified the word of the Lord, and it says this, as many as
were ordained to eternal life believed. Why? Because of the
next point. Because of the irresistible call
of the Holy Spirit, making each spiritually dead elect sinner. What does it say in Psalm 110?
He makes his people willing in the day of his power. Willing
to do what? To believe that which the flesh will not believe and
will not receive. He, by that new birth, by that
new spiritual life, makes his people willing to believe and
trust Christ. Not to rely on the will of man
to respond to a free offer. No, the Holy Spirit comes. What
do we do? We're bidden to proclaim the
truth of the true gospel of grace. We don't try to persuade in the
sense of tricking men and women by gimmicks to get inside the
door and then we'll gradually twist their arm to believe and
exercise their will. Not a bit. No, we proclaim the
truth and God the Holy Spirit. opens darkened hearts, he opens
deaf ears, he opens blind eyes to see the truth and gives new
life. And they believe because they're
overcome by the power of God, which is the gospel, the power
of God. I am not ashamed for it is the power of God unto salvation.
And that faith of God's elect then trusts God to keep them
believing to the very end. How can they be sure of that?
God has promised. He will not let any of his people
go. Jesus said to those Jews and
Pharisees in John chapter six, he said, he said, no man can
come to me unless the father draw him. No man has got the
will, the ability in his flesh, the choice to decide right to
come to Christ. No. You've got to be drawn by
the Father. And he says, and the corollary
of that is that whoever comes to me, I will in no wise cast
out. So don't let that put you off. If you feel a need to come
to Christ, you come to Christ. For he says, I will not cast
you out. And in coming, in coming there, you show that you have
that faith of God's elect. You see? Because having come,
then he says, this is the will of the Father who sent him into
this world to redeem his people from their sins. This is the
will of the Father that of all that he has given me in election
before the beginning of time, every single one of them will
get to heaven. Not one of them will be lost.
Not one of them will fall away. they will all get to heaven.
Now let me ask you, do you have the faith of God's elect? I mean
that faith. Do you have the faith of God's
elect? I could say so much more, but
for the sake of time, let's leave it at that. Do you have the faith
of God's elect? Because anything else, however
religious, however Christian it sounds, it is false. And if
it is false, it is idolatry, because you are worshipping a
god of your own imagination. Your mind made it up, not this
book. It's not in this book. It's false. It's idolatry. It's as impotent
to hear prayer as that totem pole idol that the tribe in the
jungle worships. It's as impotent to hear prayer
as that. It's as impotent to providentially
guide as that is impotent to guide. It's as impotent to keep
you from accidents as the Saint Christopher that you have round
your neck is impotent to keep you from accidents, as so many
people superstitiously believe. It's idolatry! It's idolatry,
it's falsehood, it's impotent to save. And if it's impotent
to save, then you face eternity bearing your own sins, the responsibility
for them, and the consequences in judgment. But how is this
gospel truth communicated in God's purposes? Look at verse
3. but hath in due times manifested his word through preaching."
Through preaching, which is committed unto me, says Paul as an apostle,
according to the commandment of God our Saviour. Through preaching. The word of God is manifested
through preaching. A man is called of God. He's
burdened with the message of gospel grace. That message of
gospel truth. It's pictured by the Levites
in the Old Testament. Remember the Levites had to carry
the Ark of the Covenant. They had to carry the symbols
of the temple, the tabernacle, as they journeyed through the
wilderness. The Levites were burdened. That was their job,
was to carry those bits and pieces. And in the same way, a man is
burdened with the message of the gospel of grace and is compelled
to preach. I love the way that the scripture
describes Elijah. coming to his preaching ministry
in the days of Ahab and Jezebel in Israel and we don't read any
preparation we just read and Elijah the Tishbite came and
preached and said and spoke and prayed he just came on the scene
because why God taught him God commissioned him God burdened
him for that day the man cometh the time cometh the man for that
hour God raised up that man for that time And in this time that
we're reading about here, when Paul was writing to Titus, Paul
had been raised up for that time. And Paul said, I decided that
it might be a nice career that I go and preach the gospel. No,
he didn't. He said, woe is me if I preach not the gospel. I've
got to preach it. I can't do anything else. God
has burdened me with it. He's gifted me with it. He wasn't
a good speaker. He says he wasn't a good speaker.
People complained he wasn't a good speaker, but he knew the truth,
and God had burdened him with the truth, and God had given
him the truth, and he wrote it down in the epistles, and he
preached it to all, and without exception, who would listen.
All that would listen. He was gifted with the ability
to communicate it, to engage with them, to arrest them, to
point the way, as in Pilgrim's Progress, the evangelist points
the way to the wicket gate. This is the road to the celestial
city. That's the way to go. always
constrained by the message of the word. It's the message of
the word. Hath in due times manifested
his word through preaching. It pleased God by the foolishness
of preaching to save those who believe. This is what it is.
You don't train a man to preach mechanically like you train a
plumber to be a plumber. I could take reasonably willing young person
because I've done a little bit of plumbing I mean most of the
pipes in this house have at some stage been either fastened together
or soldered together by me, and they all seem to be working,
so I think I can testify that I know what I'm doing when it
comes to plumbing. And I could teach a young person to prepare
the pipes, and to use the right fluxes, and to put the heat in
the right place, and the solder, and produce good... I can mechanically
do that. And at the end of it, they'd
probably be reasonably proficient at doing it. Not so with preaching
the Word of God. No, not so. So many people think
it's just a mechanical thing. You see, the problem is that
it must be God who teaches and calls. It must be God who speaks
to a man in his soul and gives him the message and burdens with
the message to preach. And you say, because others say
of us, you're not a proper church. Look at you, you just meet in
this room. You're not a proper church. Do you have communion? Well, who is it that does the
communion for you? How are you able to do that? Oh, the man
that preaches distributes the communion. We do it. Why? Why? Who ordained you to do that?
Shall I tell you? I'll tell you, those who listen,
those who listen. Do you know each week there's
the best part of 200 people download the sermon from Sermon Audio.
Best part of 200 most weeks. There's the people that watch
this stream. That's what ordains people like me who've never been
to a college and never been ordained by a set of bishops. That's what
ordains to preach. The people who listen. The people
who say I can hear the Good Shepherd's voice through this preaching.
That's what ordains it. So The true church then has the
faith of God's elect, and it focuses on preaching that word,
preaching it. And I challenge religious ecumenically-minded
people to compare your church with the clear doctrine and practice
of God's word. And if you find it false, which
I think in many cases you will, you need to heed the call of
Scripture. What is it? Revelation 18. Come out of her,
my people. come out of her. Don't stay there,
because it's false. Secondly, we'll move on a bit
quicker. The faith of God's elect, in verse one, and the acknowledging
of the truth which is after godliness. James wrote in his epistle, which
is after Hebrews, that faith that doesn't produce good works
is dead. It's not real faith. Because
real faith produces good works. It produces a change in the way
we are. You see, the faith of God's elect
is not just head knowledge. Yes, it's knowledge. Yes, it's
objective knowledge. But it isn't just head knowledge.
It's not dry doctrine. It's practically lived. and fruitful
faith, fruitful faith, truth which is after godliness, truth
which produces godliness, the truth of gospel grace, the truth
of salvation accomplished, God's sovereign purposes worked out,
that which produces the fruit of God's Spirit as it's defined,
for example, in Galatians chapter 5, the fruit of the Spirit is
love. joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,
meekness, temperance. Listen, against such there is
no law. There is no law. Because it's
the fruit of the Spirit of God. The fruit of God's Spirit. Solid
truth. If solid truth is in the heart
of a person, the solid truth of the gospel of grace, you know,
the heart of a person, when it comes to plumbing, we don't like
leaks. The one thing that makes my heart sink if I've done a
bit of plumbing and we fill it all back up and put the pressure
on and it starts, oh, drip, drip, oh no, we've got a leak, we've
got to drain it down and start again, oh no, no, no. But you
know, the heart of a believer is, ought to be, a very leaky
thing. It should be something that leaks,
because the truth of the gospel of grace, the faith of God's
elect, ought to leak out of that heart. It ought to leak out in
attitude to others, in demeanor to people around us, in our character,
in our relationships with others, in our financial affairs, our
approach to honesty. So important, these things. to
truthfulness, to honesty, in our approach to our possessions,
that we enjoy while we're here, but we hold them on an open palm,
because God gives and God takes away, and blessed be the name
of the Lord, said Job. And our ambitions, it's not that
we shouldn't, there are some who think they're being very
pious by telling Christians, young Christians, you shouldn't
have any ambitions. That's nonsense. Of course you
should. If you don't have ambitions, you don't achieve anything. Have
ambitions. You who are studying, you need
ambitions. You younger ones at school, you
need to have ambitions to do something. That's right and proper.
But listen, for the one who has the faith of God's elect in his
heart, her heart, their main ambition, their overriding ambition,
is for heaven. For heaven. It's the hope of
eternal life. Verse two, in hope of eternal
life which God that cannot lie promised before the world began.
An ambition for eternal life, heavenly life. A life, if you
have the faith of God's elect, it says of you that your life
is hid with Christ in God. Your treasure is not on this
earth in the things you possess, but it's in heaven. You have
a genuine desire, as Paul did, to depart this life and be with
Christ, which is far better than anything there might be here.
And this distinguishing mark of true saints is one that shows
and one that leaks out. It leaks out into this world.
It leaks out that you have a hope of heaven. And so it says in
1 Peter 3.15, be ready always to give a reason to any who asks
you about the hope that is in you. You know, oh, aren't we
in a desperate situation? People get sick and die and close,
oh, what a dreadful thing it is. But what about you? You don't
seem perturbed by this because you have a hope of heaven. Why
have you got this? Because I trust Christ. That's
it. It's such a thing. I think more and more we should
not be standing on a soapbox trying to browbeat people. We
should be leaking out this. They'll ask a reason for the
hope that's in us and we respond, answer the questions. They'll
ask. Religion is keen to do works
at the expense of truth. Truth doesn't matter, just do
your works. Always busy trying to outdo each other with charity.
Always striving to make the kingdom of Satan a better place for us
all to live in. because that's what they're doing.
That isn't faith that works, because number one, it's not
based on true faith, it's not based on the faith of God's elect,
and its objective is opposed to God's revealed will. What's
the will of God? Thy kingdom come, that God's
kingdom will come. So do we have the faith of God's
elect that works after godliness? My final point, I've only got
a couple of minutes left for this, but let's just try and
squeeze it in. It's based on verse four, and it's almost a
sermon in its own right, to Titus. my own son after the common faith,
grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus
Christ our Savior. Titus was a Gentile Greek and
Paul calls him my son in the faith. Warm affection, why? Because of the common foundation.
What's the common foundation, the common faith? It's the faith
of God's elect. It's heard with the ear. It's
embraced with the heart. There's no need for the religious
lowest common denominator to be found to achieve a false ecumenical
unity. No, we gladly together embrace
the common faith, the common truth of God's absolute sovereignty
and salvation. We share the same source of blessings. We have the same God and Father
who bestows on us the same grace, mercy and peace. in the Lord
Jesus Christ, our Saviour. He is the one to whom we gather,
and from whom we share all those blessings of grace. You know,
it's like the moon, you know, you look up on a clear night
and you see the moon, and it doesn't matter whether you're
in Britain, or America, or Australia, or South Africa, or Russia, or
wherever you are, Wherever you are, when the world spins on
its axis to the point where you see it, it's the same moon that
we're all looking at, exactly the same one. That's the experience. All of us, wherever we live on
the earth, we look to the same God and Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ to bestow our common blessings that we hold together. We have
brethren wherever in this world. What shall we have then, said
Peter to Jesus. And he said, those of you that
have left your homes and your possessions and your family for
my sake and the gospels, in this life you will have a hundredfold.
And is that not our experience? And in the life to come, even
more eternal life. Yes, wherever we go. You know
that Christine and I are going to Australia at the invitation
of Angus and Lise Fisher to do some preaching and to spend some
time with them next spring. And you sort of think, well,
have you ever met them? Yes, we've briefly met Angus.
How are you going to get on? How are you going to know if
you get on? Well, I know we know we're going to get on, because
it's been the same whenever we've got together with American brethren.
We believe the same things. When Clay and Melinda Curtis
and their family came over here, what was it, two years ago, three
years ago? Three years ago now. And how long did it take before
we were completely comfortable in one another's company? No
time at all. No time at all! It's as if we'd
never, ever been separated. Because you're on the same wavelength.
It's the common faith. That's your experience. Irrespective
of ethnicity, of language, of social status, of possessions,
of intellect, of education, there is neither Jew nor Greek, bond
nor free, male nor female, for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. And if ye be Christ's, then ye
are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise. So
then, People ask us, why do we meet as we do? Who authorized
our church? Why do we think that we can practice
the true church's ordinances? Why don't we throw our lot in
with all the rest? The answer is because of the
faith of God's elect. We cannot, we cannot compromise
it. We can only share it with those
who are true brethren, only with those who are truly fruitful
in God's service. Amen.