Remember Who You Are

[0:00] Well, as you're probably aware, the way of the world during the time of the New Testament was utterly wicked. You understand that even if you grew up in the secular school system, you will understand that to be the case in your studies of world history, or maybe once you got to college and took history of civilization, the consistency of that time frame was nothing other than wickedness. And that's not to say that our world is without such depravity now.

[0:34] Events even this week have proven to us once again that sin is as pervasive as it's ever been, as we think on the tragedy in Nashville this week and other things that have taken place.

[0:47] But there is somewhat of a difference between our experience today, at least in Western culture, versus the experience of Titus and the Cretans at the time that Paul wrote this letter.

[0:59] Our modern Western culture, at least, is influenced by the historical testimony and teaching of Christianity. In fact, even the secular arguments of morality and ethics often ignorantly have to borrow from the biblical ethic in order to make their point. Our world is so influenced, at least in its history, the Western world is so influenced, at least in its history of Christian teaching and Christian influence, that atheists and agnostics who would try to convince us that their way is right have to actually borrow from the Christian ethic to even get started. And they do that ignorantly often.

[1:44] That's really the difference between what our experience is today versus what the experience of the Cretans would have been in that day. But Christians in the early centuries, they're immersed in a culture that was in total rebellion against all that God is, all that he commands in his law. And this led, of course, to tremendous hostility toward those who stood out in the world.

[2:10] And these early believers were constantly in need of encouragement to remain faithful, to trust the Lord, to hope in his return, and to continue in godliness. And think about this for just a moment. As their leaders and the people that they loved were martyred, as their lives were continually under the threat of death and persecution, the temptation that these Christians faced was either to abandon the faith, completely isolate themselves away from the world in total seclusion, or it would be to become embittered and abandon righteous attitudes towards unbelievers.

[3:00] And we see that all through the New Testament. Constant instruction, constant encouragement, and exhortation as to how these early Christians were to think about the world outside of their church, how they were to act towards those people and towards those systems, and how they were to live and to function in a society that was alien to who they now are as people of God. So the New Testament is replete with these exhortations regarding how they're to live and act in response to the world.

[3:31] Let me give you just a few references that show this. We could give many. Let me just give you three. In John chapter 16, Jesus actually helps us. He provides encouragement.

[3:43] In this lecture that he's giving to the disciples where he essentially says, I'm going to leave you, and the world's going to hate you, and they're going to kick you out of the synagogue, a thing that would have meant something significant to those men.

[3:59] And eventually they're going to kill you. Okay, Jesus is telling the disciples all of this. And then he finishes with this. I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace.

[4:13] Do you see what Jesus is getting at there? Even if your life is easy in this world, and for many of us it often is, but even if your life is easy in this world, your peace does not come from the ease of your experience in the world.

[4:28] Jesus says, I'm telling you these things so that when those times come, your peace would not be found in what you experience in this life, but that your peace would be found in me. And he goes on to say, in the world you will have tribulation, but take heart, he says, I have overcome the world.

[4:47] Now that's a significant instruction from our Lord. It's encouraging. And there's times when we're going to face the hostility of the world. And what we need to do is go back to John 16. And we need to think about what Jesus was saying.

[4:59] Our peace does not come from our experience here. Our peace comes from Christ. To the Philippians, the men that have been gathering with us on Wednesday mornings at Chick-fil-A, we just looked at this a couple of weeks ago.

[5:12] Paul gives an instruction in these regards. In Philippians chapter one, he says, only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ. And then he continues on, for it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ, you should not only believe in him, but also suffer for his sake.

[5:34] Paul speaks of this as if it is a grace from God. That's the language he uses. It has been granted to you that not only you should believe in Christ, but that you should suffer for his sake.

[5:50] Now, that's not an easy thing to hear, is it? But it at least helps us in at least this experience of suffering and persecution that we may face to know that things haven't all of a sudden just completely, you know, went down the pipe on us here.

[6:08] That God hasn't stepped away. That there isn't anything that we're facing that all of a sudden he's kind of lost control or he's forgotten us. No, because he's actually told us already, you need to live your life worthy of the gospel because it's been granted to you actually to suffer.

[6:22] This is going to happen. You will suffer in some way. And we all are aware of that. We get to 1 Peter. The entire letter is really focused on this idea of Peter instructing and encouraging the church as they were facing persecution and dealing with suffering of their own.

[6:43] And in this passage, he tells us to endure with hope. Let me read it to you in 1 Peter chapter 5. After you have suffered a little while. Some of you are thinking, my suffering does not feel like it's been a little while.

[6:55] It may be the duration of your life, to be honest with you, from a biblical perspective. What Peter seems to mean here is that the little while is just this life, this life that is but a vapor that appears for a moment and then it vanishes away.

[7:10] The suffering is the same thing. It goes along with your life. You will experience it, but it too is like your life. It's a vapor. It will appear. It will vanish away. And then he goes on.

[7:20] And he says, after you've suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.

[7:37] And this causes Peter to immediately go into doxology. And he follows it up with, to him be dominion forever and ever. Amen, he says. That's amazing, isn't it?

[7:49] He says, you're going to suffer. And he's talking about this life. He says, but the God of all grace, he's going to return. And when he returns, he will restore you.

[8:02] He will confirm your salvation. He will strengthen you. He will establish you. Give him dominion because all dominion actually belongs to him. It's amazing, isn't it?

[8:14] And so the Bible really helps us here, doesn't it? It helps us to understand the reality of suffering. It helps us to understand the dynamics of hostility that we will face living in a wicked world that is against God.

[8:27] And it teaches us on how we're to act, how we're to think, and what our attitude should be. Well, our immediate culture may not be as imminently deadly as was the case for the Cretans here.

[8:41] But it is becoming increasingly more hostile toward Christians, toward our faith, toward our mental life. There's no question about that.

[8:52] The only reason this woman went to that school on Monday was because they were Christians who stood for truth and against unrighteousness. To be sure, it's far worse in other places around the world.

[9:08] We can think about Christians in Afghanistan who today, on the Lord's Day, it might be that two or three men have to sit in their car and drive around the city and play the radio.

[9:19] But as the radio is going, they're singing hymns to one another and they're speaking the truth of God to one another, hoping that the people outside will not pick up on what they're doing. There are some people around our world who are worshiping that way today.

[9:31] There are some places in Asia today where Christians will gather in apartment complexes and they'll pack into these apartments and they'll whisper hymns to one another rather than sing them. For fear that if their neighbors were to hear and were to turn them in to the government, they would face persecution.

[9:50] We don't live under that kind of persecution here. Sure, it's surely worse in other places around the world. But undoubtedly, there is enough hostility toward Christianity now in the United States that we will inevitably face the same temptations that our forefathers in Rome and Philippi and Ephesus and Crete experienced.

[10:12] And what we need to ask ourselves and what we must consider this morning in light of this text is how the Bible instructs us to think and act towards those who seek to destroy us, who hate us, who hate our God, who live in defiance to Him.

[10:35] How is it that we're supposed to think about them? How do we treat them? What are we supposed to do? Does the reality of their wickedness change the way that we should behave in any way?

[10:50] We may ask ourselves a few questions as we come to this text. Does the wickedness of our government absolve us of the responsibility to submit to its authority?

[11:00] Do the injustices of our criminal justice system justify rebellion against the agents tasked with enforcing the law of the land?

[11:15] Does the insanity of worldly ideas of gender and sexuality free us from God's demands regarding kindness, meekness, and the pursuit of peace?

[11:33] Those are the questions we need to consider. Because this section of Titus provides us with very helpful and practical and theological answers to those questions. The exhortations of these verses reflect even the attitudes of believers who, through a form of elitism, spiritual arrogance, use their Christianity to justify civil rebellion, community isolation, and a general attitude of harshness toward outsiders.

[12:05] That's what Paul is confronting here. These verses expose Christians who have stopped living daily in light of the gospel of grace. And they instruct believers who are rightfully angry and frustrated about the deep depravity of our world.

[12:25] Paul's instruction to Titus in leading and teaching the Christians in Crete is what gives us the form for the study this morning. He says in verse 1, Titus was to remind the Cretan believers of certain things.

[12:38] He is to remind them of certain things that they are to believe, and remind them of certain practices that they are to adopt and continue in, in order to please and represent Christ.

[12:50] And if we're to please Christ and represent Him well in our world, we must remember these things as well. Three of them I'd like to point out to you, okay? The first thing is this. Remember how to live in the world.

[13:00] Remember how to live in the world. Verses 1 and 2, remind them to be submissive to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good work, to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, to show perfect courtesy towards all people.

[13:22] Like I said a moment ago, these two verses are the main clause for most of this final chapter. Everything that follows in verses 3 through 11, as we'll get to in the next few weeks, falls beneath the scope of what Paul introduces here.

[13:38] And it seems like one of Paul's main concerns is that the Cretans were behaving in such a way that they were causing political agitation, persecution, which made the gospel and the church suspicious and brought them under more intensified threats of persecution.

[13:59] You can understand that, right? Persecution wasn't hard to find in those days. Paul here, in one sense, is actually instructing the people, don't make it worse. Don't make it worse than what it already is in the way that you act, in the way, in the attitudes that you have.

[14:16] Another concern that seems to be on Paul's mind here is that the spirit of these Christians towards unbelievers would actually discredit the gospel, leading the world to hate Christians for their arrogance and immediately dismiss the message of salvation before even really giving it a chance to hear it.

[14:37] Do you see the difference there? That it's one thing to stand for truth, but if the way that we're standing for truth is immediately a turnoff to the world so that they never hear the truth that we're actually proclaiming, what good is it?

[14:50] Paul's confronting these things. That's the purpose behind what he's saying. In the Old Testament, it's often said that the actions of certain people caused the Israelites to, quote, stink or become a stench.

[15:03] In the minds of other nations. And there is a sense here in which Paul is commanding behavior that will prevent Christians from becoming an unnecessary stench to the world.

[15:20] But even more important than that is the fact that these behaviors demonstrate true righteousness. They mimic the attitudes and actions of the Lord Jesus in his ministry.

[15:33] That's the most important of these things. If we are going to live like Christ lived, then we're going to have to adopt the things that Paul is instructing here in these verses. And in the end, it all boils down to one thing.

[15:49] Living with grace towards others. That's really the key word here. Grace. So let me, instead of just going through all of these details, it would take us forever to do that.

[16:00] I'll leave it to you to examine each word individually if you'd like to do that on your own. I've broken them up into two categories that I think will be helpful for us. Here's the first one. We are to show grace through civic responsibility.

[16:15] We are to show grace through civic responsibility. Look again at verse one. Remind them to be submissive to rulers and authorities, to be obedient to those rulers and authorities, and to be ready for every good work.

[16:33] So the items listed here in this first verse, they all have to do with the Christian's engagement in the life of the community. And it answers the question, does the wickedness of our governing rulers justify our rebellion against their general authority?

[16:52] And the resounding answer is no, it doesn't. It wouldn't be surprising that the Cretans are actually dealing with this either, would it? Because as we learned in chapter one, there were false teachers that primarily belonged to the Jewish sect, perhaps the party of circumcision, that were coming into the church, they were distorting the gospel, and part of their mindset was an anti-government insurrectionist type of view.

[17:20] It's the same thing that Jesus dealt with in his ministry, and this is only a few years later. This letter is being written only a few years before actually an ultimate rebellion comes in in Israel, and Rome comes in and absolutely decimates Jerusalem.

[17:34] So this is a common mindset among Jews, this insurrectionist type of mindset. Remember, one of the reasons that the Jews continued to reject Jesus is because he did not come to be that messianic ruler that they thought he would be, but he actually came to give his life for our sins, and so many of them turned away from him.

[17:55] But Paul says Christians are to be submissive to rulers and authorities, that they are to be obedient to them, because, as he says in Romans 13, they have been instituted and ordained by God.

[18:12] We're to pay our taxes. Jesus said that. We're to obey the rule of law. We're to comply with the government's demands insofar as they do not lead us to violate the commands of Scripture.

[18:29] This is a part of how we're to obey and live and think in the world. The final statement in this verse, to be ready for every good work, it moves us from passive obedience to active and positive engagement.

[18:44] Donald Guthrie is helpful here. He says the Christian should be ready to do whatever is good in the community in which he lives. Where good citizenship demands communal action, he must always be cooperative, provided no question of conscience is involved, which confronts our temptations to completely isolate ourselves from the community where God has placed us.

[19:10] Whenever we can do good to our neighbors and for our neighbors, whether they're believers or not, we must be ready for every good work.

[19:22] Remember, Jesus, it seems contradictory, but it's what Jesus said. Jesus said, you are not of this world, but I'm actually sending you into it.

[19:33] And I'm sending you into it, not so that you would isolate away from it, but that you would stand out in the midst of it. That people may see you in their midst as his kingdom people.

[19:49] And if we're not willing to graciously serve our community, we'll fall short of Christ's desire and we'll ultimately inhibit the work of evangelism in our lives and through our church. You say, well, how am I supposed to be involved?

[20:02] It may be as simple as casting your vote when the election comes. Thinking I want to do something that is going to be good for my community.

[20:15] I want to be ready for every good work, which means I will exercise the voice that God has allowed me to have, at least in a local, in a state, in a federal election. I think that's an implication of this text for us.

[20:27] It may be advocating for better education in your kid's school. It may be volunteering in some way, maybe in the community like we're doing this afternoon.

[20:39] This is the town's event that we're involved with this afternoon, not our event. We are volunteering to help them, and in response, they are so gracious to let us influence the people that are coming to their event, trying to do good in the community.

[20:54] Maybe it's when natural disasters come and you find a way to help your neighbors, find ways to help them get along, whether they're believers or not. This isn't a command for political obsession.

[21:06] That's actually something that we need to avoid. It's actually seeking good for our neighbors. And Paul says, this is the way we live in the world. So we show grace in doing that.

[21:17] We show grace in civic responsibility. Number two, we show grace by communicating courteously. Communicating, is this not the most difficult thing in this passage?

[21:28] Verse two, to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, but to be gentle, to show perfect courtesy toward all people.

[21:43] Notice that all of the items here in this verse are connected to how we speak. We are to avoid slander, foolish argumentation, and instead show gentleness and perfect courtesy toward all people.

[22:02] So that no matter how great our frustration, our stand for truth, and our stand against sin, must be wrapped and clothed in kindness and courtesy and the love that was modeled by our Lord.

[22:19] Who Peter writes in 1 Peter chapter two, when he was reviled, did not revile in return. When he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly.

[22:34] Is Jesus not our pattern here? He did not curse those who nailed him to a cross. He said instead, Father, forgive them.

[22:45] They don't even know what they're doing. Paul would later on say that before his conversion, in the way that he breathed out threatenings to the church, he did so in ignorance. It's the same thing Jesus was saying from the cross about the Romans who nailed him there and crucified and Father, forgive them.

[23:00] They don't even know what they're doing. Paul says, I didn't even know, I didn't even know how sinful I was in what I was doing. I thought I was pleasing the Lord. I wasn't doing any of those things. So that when Jesus was reviled, he didn't revile.

[23:15] When he suffered, he didn't threaten. That's our pattern. Rather than engaging in spiteful rants and hateful rhetoric, we should be discerning in our speech, seeking to show grace in our communication of the gospel.

[23:32] And I've said this, if I've said it once, I've said it a hundred times on Sunday mornings here, if the world must hate us and they will, Jesus said they will, let it be for the truth that we proclaim rather than the way we communicate that truth.

[23:50] If they are to despise us, let it be for the gospel consistency of our lives that brings conviction to their own rather than an ungracious manner that actually contradicts the message of grace that we say that we believe and proclaim.

[24:04] Colossians 4, walk in wisdom toward outsiders, unbelievers, in the world. Walk in wisdom. And how are we to do that?

[24:18] Letting our speech be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person. We can't allow our frustration with the wickedness of our culture to lead us to respond sinfully towards them.

[24:37] Neither must we allow the wickedness of our culture to silence us from speaking the truth of God and calling them to turn from their wickedness to the grace of God.

[24:50] But in calling them to turn, we must do it in a way that is gracious, loving, kind, and courteous. someone may say, why should we care to act this way?

[25:03] Why should we care to be involved in a world system who hates us? Why should we care at all to actually be of any benefit to a community who hates our God and hates our message?

[25:16] They don't deserve that. And you're right. But the answer is in the next few verses. The answer for the reason for us to show grace to the world around us is because of all the grace that we have received when we didn't deserve it.

[25:33] That's what Paul moves to in the next thing. So first, we are to remember how to live in the world. Number two, remember what you were. Remember what you were. Verse three, for we ourselves.

[25:44] Remember, I told you a few weeks ago, this word for, often, it's a grounding statement, meaning that whatever follows from this conjunction, from this particular turn of phrase, is going to establish the motivation for what has just been said.

[25:58] So Paul says, do this, live this way in the world, and here's why. For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others, and hating one another.

[26:17] I mentioned before that the undergirding, undergirding this section is the problem of spiritual arrogance and elitism elitism that can sometimes pervade the Christian heart. And it's Paul's appeal in verses three through five that leads me to believe that was the force behind the issues in Crete.

[26:34] He could have easily instructed the things of verse one and two by a direct appeal to the commandments of the scripture, but that's not what he does. Instead, he told Titus to remind the Cretan believers that their motivation is their life before Christ.

[26:54] That's what he says. Do this because this is what you once were. It's as if they had forgotten how desperately sinful they were before being shown the grace of God.

[27:08] They had stopped living daily in the light of the gospel of grace and had begun thinking of themselves more highly than they ought to think. And again, I'll leave it to you to think through all the details, but the opening item here is what shapes the rest of the list.

[27:26] He says, for we were once foolish. And by foolish, Paul means that we were at one time without spiritual understanding, which meant that we were in bondage to sin, bearing the fruit of wickedness in the world and in our lives.

[27:46] We were as dead in our trespasses and sins, according to Ephesians 2, as everybody else is dead in their trespasses and sin. But these Cretans seem to have begun to forget their utter lostness without Jesus.

[28:01] And instead of looking at the world with compassion and sympathy towards their plight, the general attitude had become arrogant and condescending. Look at where we are.

[28:13] We're so much better than you. And that shapes the way that they look at the rest of the world, putting themselves here, pushing everyone else below. And they begin, at least in their minds and their actions, to abandon the gospel of grace.

[28:28] You see, this is why we talk about disagreements in structures and formats and frameworks for the gospel and things like that. But this is one of the reasons it's so important for us to care about that and to have those discussions.

[28:40] Because at the moment that we begin to insinuate that our salvation has anything to do with us, we're going to start letting issues like this creep into our behavior and into our thoughts. If we decided to give the world what it deserves and demanded that God do that, we would also need to receive what we deserve.

[29:04] And what we all deserve is the wrath of God. But God is so gracious even to the most vehement of sinners reserving His wrath for a future judgment.

[29:18] We look at the world around us and say, why does God let any of us live? Forget even for a moment the question of why would God save any of us and just think for just a moment, why would God let any of us live?

[29:33] That's what R.C. Sproul was getting at in that famous statement he made. People laugh about it and they've made t-shirts out of it when he says, what's wrong with you people? He meant that because he was seriously angry about a question where people were questioning whether or not God was just in condemning Adam for his sin, a sin that to us seems like such a little thing.

[29:57] And Sproul says, what's wrong with us? Adam was a creature of the dirt who defied the living God and it was only of God's grace that he breathed another breath and when we begin to understand the grace of God we see it is only by God's grace that we take a single breath in this life.

[30:22] Matthew 5 Jesus said, for he makes his son to rise on the evil and on the good. He sends the rain on the just and on the unjust.

[30:32] And if this is how God responds to unbelievers, shouldn't we be concerned to do the same thing? Rather than to be like James and John asking to call down fire from heaven to consume the people who offend us, should we not instead respond with the same grace that God has shown to us?

[30:53] we should remember what we were and in remembering what we were it will shape the way we think and live in this world and it should produce a gracious compassion, a desire for the conversion of the lost rather than the condemnation of the lost.

[31:14] And I'm not convinced that conversion is always what our hope is. At least in the way that we think and the way that we speak. It's as if we relish the fact that people will spend an eternity away from God.

[31:29] Why would we desire that for anyone? Thirdly, he says, remember the goodness of God. Remember the goodness of God.

[31:40] Verse 4, but when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us not because of works done by us in righteousness but according to his own mercy.

[31:58] We're going to return to this verse in a couple of weeks but I at least want to consider it in light of these first three verses. Again, the fact that Paul appeals to this dynamic of works versus grace helps us understand what the general problem must have been in Crete.

[32:14] The longer we're saved, the more prone we are to forget the crucial work of God's grace and salvation. And if we aren't careful to preach the gospel to ourselves every day, we'll start to think that our salvation has something to do with us.

[32:35] That we made ourselves savable and in return, God introduced his grace to us. And when that happens, we'll start to speak to the world as if their path to salvation is to be more like us.

[32:54] Be more like us. Think more like us. Talk more like us. Do the things that we do. Vote the way we vote. Do all the things that we do in our lives. We'll start to think that your path to righteousness and peace with God is to be like me because look how good I've done at obeying God.

[33:13] We'll become evangelists for conservatism that is influenced by Christian ethics rather than preachers of the gospel of grace. And Paul very quickly reminds them that when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us not because of works done by us in righteousness.

[33:33] righteousness. It wasn't because you just figured it out. It wasn't because you were more savable than anyone else. But it was according to his own mercy that he shows on whomever he wills.

[33:51] Titus was to remind the people that they weren't saved because they got their lives put together in a certain way and they weren't saved because they were smart enough to choose Jesus when others didn't.

[34:01] No, they were saved because the goodness of God's grace shone in Jesus Christ awakened in their heart by the Spirit of God.

[34:13] You see, the gospel of grace alone ultimately shapes our attitudes and our actions in this life. It is our hope of Christ's return and his eternal rule that helps us endure the sufferings of this world.

[34:27] That's what Peter was getting at in the earlier passage we quoted. It's the goodness of God shown to us that drives our desire for others to be saved rather than destroyed.

[34:38] That's what Paul's just made a point of in verse 3. And in the end the gospel will always, always, always produce humility not arrogance and hatefulness.

[34:54] And if your struggle today is to live in humility toward outsiders, it's because you either don't understand or you're not living in light of the gospel of God's grace because the gospel always produces humility.

[35:15] Which is why it's so important. We must not think of the gospel as something that is useful for us at the moment of conversion but is just the milk of the word that we leave behind and go on to greater things like what exactly will it be like when Jesus returns and which millennial perspective is right.

[35:31] We think those are the, we think that those are the significant things. We think that's the meat of the word. No, the meat of the word is the gospel. It's the gospel. And no matter how much you dig into it, no matter how many years you spend as a Christian thinking on the gospel of grace, it will never grow tired.

[35:49] It will never grow old. And even after years of being a Christian, you'll have moments where the spirit of God awakens your mind and enlightens your mind to the reality of his goodness and of his grace towards us.

[36:03] It always produces humility. And if what it's produced in you is some type of arrogance or hatefulness, it's not the gospel of grace that you've come to believe. Really, there's two ways that we must think of responding to this text.

[36:26] There may be more, but I'm going to give you two. And the way that you respond really depends on which side of the but in verse four you find yourself on.

[36:36] You see that? Verse four, but when the goodness of God appeared to us in the person of Christ. And there may be someone here today that has never actually experienced the saving grace of God.

[36:50] of course, the very fact that you're here and that you have breath and that you're not starving and that you're not on the verge of death is evidence that you have in some sense received the grace of God that is given to every single person out of the loving kindness of God.

[37:09] What we would call common grace. But you may not have ever experienced the saving grace of God. you're still living your life in verse three.

[37:22] Foolish. Chasing after passions and pleasures of this life. Filled with malice and envy. Hated by others.

[37:36] Hating one another. Now your behavior may be conservative. It may perhaps generally conform to a Christian ethic or it could be the opposite of that.

[37:51] It could be notoriously set against everything that God says and that God is. But in either case, you're resting your eternal hope on self-righteousness rather than the grace of God.

[38:05] You're hoping you'll make it because you have the right mindset and the right worldview and you're doing the right things and since you're doing the right things then how could God ever turn you away?

[38:19] And you've received common grace but you haven't actually experienced saving grace. And this week, if you would just look to the cross, the cross of Christ exposes the complete error of that way of thinking.

[38:39] If there was anything good you could do to be at peace with God, then there was no reason for Jesus to suffer and die and be crucified on that cross.

[38:52] The very fact that he did shows that you are utterly lost on your own. and I beg you to leave your self-righteousness and turn finally to the grace of God in Christ.

[39:17] Trusting in him alone, clinging to his work of mercy and grace, abandoning your sin, abandoning your selfish pursuits and the efforts that you have burdened yourself with.

[39:34] Leave the burden alone. Leave it. Others here, you know the grace of Christ.

[39:45] You know the glory of it. There's times in your life where you're overwhelmed when you begin to think of it. The fact that God has so ordained the steps of your life that he would be so gracious that you would not only hear the gospel because there's many people who don't, but not only that you would hear the gospel but that he would open your heart to believe it.

[40:07] But the truth is you're not living in light of that gospel day by day. And it may be that your general attitude towards unbelievers is kind of condescending,!

[40:19] A little hateful! And if you're to be real honest with yourself, you'd have to say, my persona in my community or maybe online or whatever it is or with my family, I've actually probably made the gospel stink to a lot of people.

[40:45] And if that's you, can I just, if you'll just reconsider day by day the gospel of grace, preach to yourself the gospel every single day.

[40:59] Start your day by asking yourself, what is the gospel? What is the gospel? And if you really understand it, you'll begin each day in praise that God would love you, that he would save you, and that will shape the way that you respond to the other people that frustrate you at your work.

[41:24] It will shape the way that you post. It will shape your isolation versus engagement. It will motivate evangelism.

[41:35] It will do all those things. When I was growing up, anytime I was going somewhere, if it was to a friend's house or maybe on a youth activity, wherever it was that I wasn't around my dad and he couldn't see me, he would the last thing he would say to me is he would make me say my name.

[41:55] He didn't care about my first name. He wanted me to hear myself say my last name knowing that it's also his last name. That was really the purpose of that. And then he would make this statement.

[42:07] It's the last thing he would always say. He would say, remember who you are and remember whose you are. And what dad meant by that was two fold.

[42:20] Because he was a Christian, he wanted me to remember the fact that I belonged to Christ and that that mattered in the way that I lived and the way that I treated others and the whole thing.

[42:33] The other thing that he wanted me to remember is that I belonged to him and that wherever I went, I carried his name with me. And that if I were to act in a way that was disrespectful or sinful or dishonorable, it would not only reflect my attitudes and actions, but it would be a reflection on him because I belong to him.

[42:59] And there is a sense in which this passage, Paul is telling Titus, just gather the church together and just tell them, remember who you are and remember whose you are.

[43:11] And who are you? If you know Christ, it's the song that we used to all probably sing growing up, I'm just a sinner saved by grace. That's all that I am.

[43:23] I told you a couple of weeks ago a little bit about Martin Lloyd-Jones. When it came to his dying days, the young man that was doing his funeral, he told him, he said, when you stand before that congregation at my funeral, just tell them I was a sinner saved by grace.

[43:43] That's all I was. And his point was don't make it about any accolades that you may want to give me or about anything that perhaps that I have done in my life. Just tell them at the heart of it, I'm just a sinner.

[43:54] That's all that I am. That has been shown the wonderful grace of God. And if you know Christ, that's what you are. That's who you are. You're just a sinner. Remember what you are. But now remember what you are.

[44:06] You're saved. Saved by grace. And remember whose you are. You are not your own. For you have been bought with a price. Therefore glorify God in your body, in the way that you live, in the way that you think.

[44:24] Because the things that you do are a reflection on him to whom you belong. And we don't want to make Cornelius plug their noses when they see the Christians come by.

[44:38] Because the Christians are the most arrogant of us. No. They may hate us. But let it not be because we're continuing in the sin that we've been saved from.